A shattered, tumbled mass of wreckage where a moment before there had been a village.... Fire leaped to the last destruction.... Smoke rolled up in great spiraling clouds....
And visible, down beneath the ruin, a ring of victorious shimmering ghosts, standing awed and alone in the empty darkness....
CHAPTER XXI
EACH TO HIS OWN ALLOTTED PORTION
We stood in the Borderland with Thone and Ala.
"You will not return to our Ego-world?" said Thone. It was a statement in tone, rather than a question. "You are right, friends. Each to his own, as the Creator intended. Your world, better for you—but ours, best of them all, for us."
Ala was standing close by Will. So near was she to our Earth-state, here in the Borderland, that I knew she had felt for Will those stirrings we call love. And now she was fighting them.
He touched her. "Could you not find it best to come with my sister and me, Ala?"
But she shook her head. "No. Father speaks truth. One should hold in contentment his allotted portion." But I think it tore at her with a new, very human temptation. "Good-bye," she said resolutely.
It wrenched at us all. Friendship, even over so brief an interval, cannot be lightly broken. We told ourselves we would not break it. Some day, some time, we would again come together.